Drawing upon the work of Bourdieu, Foucault and Fairclough, this paper focuses on the discursive construction of partnership and empowerment in the official discourse of contemporary British urban regeneration. The paper argues that partnership and empowerment are not neutral terms but are discursive constructs, the meaning assigned to these terms is thus the result of the exercise of power, which in turn has a crucial role in structuring the discursive context within which urban regeneration partnerships operate. The paper's emphasis on official discourse constructs a top-down view of the regeneration process and the community's role in that process. These issues are investigated through a narrative which focuses on a key official document, Involving Communities in Urban and Rural Regeneration, providing guidance on community participation in urban regeneration partnerships. The paper concludes that the operation of these discursive constructs in urban regeneration reinforces existing social relations.
Despite that small and medium‐sized towns (SMSTs) have been, and continue to be, a central part of the history of Europe, these places have largely been neglected by urban research. The ESPON TOWN project, on which this Special Issue builds, sought to redress this neglect performing a comparative analysis of their position and role across Europe. In this introductory paper we discuss some of the theoretical and methodological challenges when it came to identifying, studying and analysing SMSTs and the theoretical framework developed to inform our understanding of SMSTs. In particular, three themes are discussed. The first one is about the ontological problem of defining a town. Administrative, morphological and functional perspectives are considered. The second one reflects on a wide array of interpretative approaches about the relationship between towns and their regional context. The third one is about the thematic and multi‐scalar perspectives that can characterise the policy approach to towns.
In recent years the term 'social exclusion' has come to occupy a central place in the discussion of social policy and inequality in Europe. While the notion has acquired important strategic connotations, by stressing structural and cultural/social processes, the precise meaning of the term remains somewhat elusive. This article focuses on the reasons for and the manner in which the notion of social exclusion has developed within the EU social policy discourse, aiming to provide a clearer understanding of its origins, functions and multiple dimensions. Whilst adopting a critical approach to the notion of social exclusion, the article suggests that the concept has played a positive role in keeping issues such as inequality and poverty on the policy agenda. The article also suggests possible ways in which social exclusion might be developed in a climate which has become less conducive, if not hostile, to an autonomous, activist EU social policy.
The paper introduces the concept of territorial assets and discusses their role for regional development. Focusing on European societies and taking into account different strands of the literature on place and territorial capital, we argue that the endowment with – and mobilization of – such territorial assets could be seen as a key aspect of regional policy, producing changes in the attraction (and/or retention) of specific segments of population and, in a longer-term perspective, influencing sustainable development strategies. In this light, ‘territorial attractiveness’ – characterized in this paper in both conceptual and operational terms – is presented as a powerful element in European spatial policy, allowing regional development strategies to be more systematically integrated under an overall objective of territorial cohesion, while taking into account their implications in terms of human mobility.
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